A Great Way to Use Movenote in High School History and Other Classes

My name is Peter Paccone and I am a San Marino (CA) High School Social Studies teacher (29 years).

To get my World History students to use Movenote, and to provide them with an opportunity to work on a long term project that they are sure to find informative, interesting, and engaging, I have created:

TED Talk - A Story Worth Sharing.

For this project, the students first form groups of two to three (and sometimes even four, depending on their English Language proficiency skills).

Then they search the internet (and other non digital sources) to find a story in World History that's worth sharing (with some of their better search findings appearing at the end of this article).

Then the students work to produce a no more than five-minute Google slide show presentation designed to tell the story the students have selected.

As they developed their ideas, group’s critique one another's work, referring to rubrics and exemplars while I check research notes, review rough drafts and plans, and meet with groups to monitor their progress.

The all important goal here - to ensure that much reflection and revision takes place.

I then provide the students with an opportunity to use their Chromebooks to insert their Google slide show presentation into Movenote, with the students video narration incorporated into Movenote from the Chromebook’s webcam.

In all, I provide my students with one class period (55 minutes) per week for a nine week period of time to work on the project.

If first semester results are any indication, the end product is truly astounding - a TED Talk like, high quality, finished work (though not peformed live).

A great suggestion: Have some of the finished work emailed to three to five adults (teachers, parents, admins, city officials) along with a request that the finished work be viewed and critiqued, with the critique then sent back to the students via email.

Better yet, invite some of the adult critiquers into class to not only share their critiques directly with the students, but to also ask the students who produced the finished work a number of follow-up questions.

Experience has shown that if you tell the students at the beginning of the project that this is how the project will end, the students will become infinitely more motivated to produce a work of high quality.

Do all the above and I am confident you two will claim that TED Talk - A Story Worth Sharing is a project idea that is also worth sharing . . . especially if you use Movenote!

Stories Worth Sharing in World History

• The July 1944 attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler
• The Steamboat Sultana - A Forgotten Disaster
• America's First Subway
• John Kennedy and PT-109
• Hatshepsut: How a Woman Took the Throne
• Thomas Paine: America’s Most Radical Revolutionary
• The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to America
• Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
• Sacco and Vanzetti
• The Scopes Trial
• The Boxer Rebellion
• Marching with "General Ludd" and Machine Breaking in the Industrial Revolution
• King Leopold's "Heart of Darkness"
• Shi Huangdi and the Terracotta Warriors
• Firestorms: The Bombing of Civilians in World War II
• The Code Napoleon
• The Assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald
• Blood and Tribute: The Rise and Fall of the Aztec Empire
• The Kennewick Controversies
• The Riddle of the Romanovs
• The Mandinko of the Gambia
• FDR Tries to "Pack" the Supreme Court
• Haiti and the Boat People
• The Bukharin Show Trial

True, the above was created with high school history (World and US) in mind. But couldn't the project as described also have great applicability in many other  non history classes as well.

In any event, I close with by saying that Movenote is a great program and one that on its own, for whatever reason you may chose, I highly recommend.

Certainly, Movenote is a great tool for anyone who in anyway whatsoever is flipping their classroom (as I am).

Movenote (according to the Movenote website) is a tool for teachers and students alike. It can be used to flip the classroom, practice presenting, practice new languages, and share information and teach from a distance. Movenote is very versatile and has been used by teachers from a variety of different subjects and levels.

Movenote is easy to use through your Google Drive and Gmail, making it extremely simple to create and share these presentations. You can add your documents from your drive, other cloud platforms or your computer. After this you can present your documents, use the laser pointer and share your presentation with a simple link. Movenote also has apps for iOS and Android devices. The recordings made on movenote can be watched on any device that supports video. This means flexibility for the teaching environment!